Vatican City

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Pope Francis on June 10, with pressure on the pope to speak up about the Kremlin's role in the Ukraine conflict.

The visit, which was confirmed Thursday by the Holy See's chief spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, will be Putin's second meeting with Francis. The two leaders also met in the Vatican in November 2013.

But the ground between Moscow and Rome has shifted significantly in the interim, with Russia annexing the Crimea Peninsula last year and being accused of fomenting the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.

With financial assistance from Pope Francis, a Rome parish led 50 homeless and poor people on a pilgrimage to see the Shroud of Turin on Thursday and has provided the money needed for another Rome parish to do the same a week later.

Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, the papal almoner, said the pope supported the pilgrimages particularly as part of the preparation for his own trip to Turin June 21-22 to venerate the shroud, which has been on public display since late April.

Cubans are waiting for Pope Francis "with open arms," said Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino of Havana.

The cardinal met briefly with the pope at the end of the papal general audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square. The cardinal was in Rome fine-tuning the program for the papal visit to Cuba this September, according to the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

Families are weakened and destroyed by war, "the mother of all forms of poverty," as well as by economies and policies that worship money and power, Pope Francis said.

"It's almost a miracle" that, even in poverty and crisis, the family can keep on going, safeguarding its bonds and staying intact, he said at his weekly general audience Wednesday in St. Peter's Square.

The road to salvation may be pitted with failures, but God uses them and overturns them to manifest his love for his people, said Pope Francis.

Reflecting on the parable of the wicked tenants in the Gospel of Mark during morning Mass at the Domus Sanctae Marthae on Monday, the pope said the parable may be understood to represent the "failure of God's dream."

Pope Francis said he will dedicate his one-day visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina to encouraging a minority Catholic community in the faith, fostering ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, and calling for peace and harmony after the devastations of war.

He said he would be coming "as a brother messenger of peace to express to everyone -- everyone -- my esteem and friendship. I would like to proclaim to each person, each family, each community, God's mercy, tenderness and love."

Sometimes, Pope Francis said, the most important thing parents of a seriously ill child can do is to keep asking God, "Why?"

A child of 2 or 3 years will torment his or her parents with a continual series of "whys," the pope said. The little ones are not looking for answers as much as they are seeking the attention of Mom or Dad.

"We can ask the Lord, 'Why, Lord? Why do children suffer? Why this child?' The Lord will not respond with words, but we will feel his gaze upon us and this will give us strength," Pope Francis told the parents of 20 seriously ill children.

The Vatican's main spokesman has downplayed comments made about Australian Cardinal George Pell by a member of Pope Francis' commission on clergy sexual abuse, saying the member was speaking in his own name and not in the authority of the commission.

Commission member Peter Saunders, an English survivor of clergy sexual abuse, said in an Australian television interview Sunday that Pell had had an "almost sociopathic" disregard for abuse victims.